Stories about flying

Rather ironically, I've never been a very comfortable flyer. Take off and landing is always the worst but loud noises, strange smells, odd angles and dizzying heights will make my palms sweat and turn me into one of those crazies who scream at nobody in particular, "We are all going to DIE!"

In recent months my discomfort on aeroplanes has become dramatically worse. I blame it on a fairground ride a friend and I recently took in Hampstead Heath during which the ride literally malfunctioned mid-air, heightening my self-awareness of gravity and mortality.

After that episode, my first realisation that I was going to die on an aeroplane came on a flight to Barcelona from London. Cabin crew were brewing coffee near my seat and I told my friend that something wasn't right with the plane because it sounded to me like the engines were peetering out.

From Barcelona to Ibiza, at about 10pm, while many of my fellow passengers were dressed to the nines, ordering as much booze as possible on a 45 minute flight, I became irrationally angry as everybody talked over the safety demonstration and seemed glaringly oblivious to the fact that a freak storm was going to drive our plane into the ocean, like Lost. I literally bristled with anger, unable to read my magazine, because everybody but me was in such high spirits.

Again, Ibiza back to Barcelona, as the plane flew a half-circle preparing for descent, I became convinced that the plane was going to fall out of the sky... Auckland to Sydney I could smell petrol in the cabin and decided the plane was going to blow up once we got into the skies. Madrid to London and the plane seemed to be travelling too fast for landing so I prepared myself for the fact that we were going to slam into the ground and then probably overstep the runway and crash into a building. Or another plane. And so on.

So you see, I have become rather preposteriously paranoid and have even deliberated for months about whether or not I should jinx myself by writing about this.

However, in an effort to overcome what I perceived to be a major obstacle in mentally surviving a 24 hour flight to New Zealand I decided to do what any other slightly crazy person in my situation would do- I started watching Air Crash Investigation in bulk, late at night.

And, in actual fact, while this has brought home the fact that air crashes aren't usually a survivable feat, it has eased my fears somewhat. I've learned a few things.

Number one- planes don't really fall out of skies (my biggest paranoia). They just don't. And if they do, if the pilot is a smart cookie, he should be able to reverse a stall. Which brings me to my second point.

Number two- Planes don't crash. Pilots do. In every episode of ACI I watched, the reason for each crash was pilot incompetence. Every. Single. Time. So the mind boggling feat of how a plane manages to get up, and stay up in the air is negligible, compared to some of the mind boggling mistakes pilots make under duress or pure tiredness.

Which brings me to number three- if something does go wrong with the plane or the flight, the pilot has been trained to fix it. And if he can't fix it, he can contact ground team who can tell him how. Usually, if something goes wrong, there is generally plenty of time to be able to correct the problem and continue a safe flight.

So everytime I fly I now run these three points through my mind, over and over. To be honest, they don't help much. But memories of past flights do - in spite of my fears I have to admit I have had some amazing, life-changing experiences that have all begun with a flight. For example-

- Flying in a helicopter over the New York City skyline (incidentally, this helicopter later plunged into the Hudson River, killing everybody on board, including the Kiwi pilot, mere months after my trip).

-Flying from San Francisco to London for the first time. We swooped over the Golden Gate Bridge which was the perfect ending to my time in California, paving way to an exciting new beginning in London.

-Verona to London and witnessing a truly beautiful sunset from 37,000 feet high.

-Taking off during an electrical storm, Brisbane to Auckland. 

-After a week in third world-like Vanuatu, stepping onto an Air New Zealand flight with all it's high-tech gadgets seemed the height of luxury and reminded me of how lucky we all are to have the things we do. 

-Greece to London and because our flight was early we had to fly in circles above Heathrow for about 20 minutes, along with about five other flights. Absolutely bizaare sight.

-Leaving Auckland in 2010, after an emotional good-bye with friends and family, unable to stop crying, not knowing when I was going to be back, but very, very excited. And then landing at the same airport, exactly a year to the day later, feeling unbelievably excited to be back.

These days, my life seems to be all about the airports, the travelling, the flying. If I'm not departing Gatwick or Stansted, I am waiting for my latest visitor at Heathrow. The arrivals area is always the happiest part of flying. Which I guess is why I keep booking them.






Auckland to Brisbane, 2009




San Francisco to London, 2010




London to Marseille, 2011




London to Auckland, 2011



London to Verona, 2011

Vanuatu, 2009



EasyJet flight deck, Barcelona, 2011




London to Madrid, September 2011



Fear

On September 11 2001 I was at home, in bed, sick. Earlier in the week I had picked up some kind of stomach bug, I remember counting the number of times in one day I vomited- 13, if you're interested. It was a weekend and my younger brother came into my room to tell me some planes had crashed into some buildings in New York City. I remember thinking what a stupid pilot , how could he not see the buildings?

Later, I watched the news and for the first time in my life, realised what a horrible place the world is. The horror was just unimaginable. It physically hurt to think of the terror these thousands of people must have felt. For years afterwards I used to have nightmares about flying to America. In my dreams there were no crashes or terrorist attacks, but the idea of simply flying anywhere was scary to me. The risks seemed then, and still, impossibly frightening.

I visited New York for the first time in 2008. We visited Ground Zero and several church memorials. I expected to feel sad and sick, but truthfully I didn't feel anything for what, to me, was just a construction site. I had no emotional attachment to that place, it was only the images of people jumping from tall buildings that would make the hairs on my arms stand on end.

Being Thanksgiving at the time, the New York City police started issuing terror alerts. News reports warned us not to use the subway if we could help it, and to report any suspicious behaviour. Needless to say, coming from a small town in New Zealand, the warnings frightened me and I wanted to stay in the hotel. Australians on my tour just laughed- we get warnings like that all the time in Sydney and Melbourne they scoffed. You can't live your life in fear, or the terrorists will win. And so we do all continue to live our lives. We continue to ride the underground and take flights overseas.

I am still frightened of being a statistic. I look at people on the tube with backpacks and wonder if I should take a different train. I've sized people up at the departure gate and I jump at loud noises. But nothing will stop me from continuing to book these tickets, to embark on these adventures. Life is short. Health, money, ability and opportunity won't always be there tomorrow. Let's roll.

Where are all the other travellers?

I know very few people who share my need to keep moving. I know people who like holidays, people who like Paris and people who have been to lots of places. I don't know anybody who would spend their last 40 quid on a one way ticket to Moscow. Nobody knows what it's like to look at a world map and think, 'Well, I guess I better get cracking.'

The beauty of friendship is that sometimes people can point out things you can't see for yourself.

Today, after a particularly agonising week of dissecting my finances, re-writing budgets, looking at a map and then re-writing them again, somebody said to me something along the lines of, "I would think travelling is the key to becoming a travel writer." 

Which is kind of obvious really isn't it? But I've spent so much time trying to be responsible, squirelling away money and trying to put a lid on my overwhelming desire to explore Europe's best cobbled streets, that I've missed the point of it all- to write well, you have to write what you know.

Last week my favorite partner in crime, who is currently exploring Canada, told me she was going to keep travelling until all her money ran out. And my first thought was, 'thank god somebody else understands.'

That is, understands the complete indifference to owning homes, settling down with hubby and children, having a high paying job that pays for a home in Notting Hill and numerous trips to Dior but doesn't allow for any real time off.

When did vivir suddenly mean to become part of a rat-race, a statistic, a bore? When did we stop living and start dreaming, instead of the other way around? Where are all the other travellers?

History

London is a film with an ever-changing cast of characters and a new storyline every hour. There's the woman in her mid 40s with the glazed stare. She brings her own hair dye to the salon and sifts through garbage at night. The silver-haired man who sits in every shop window with a coffee and a newspaper. A tall intellectual type in a checked shirt, hair in a ponytail, with The New Yorker stuffed in his back pocket. The barman who does a famous whiskey sour and a bouncer with a scarred face. A bus that never arrives, a sliding door, a missed train, an emergency cab-ride, al fresco dinners, hot nights, burning buildings, boarded windows, screaming sirens. Someone exited in search of a better life and those left in the wake began questioning theirs.

Back to Black

After a reasonably cool summer the weather suddenly became stifling hot, the kind where the streets smelled like tar and dusk didn't settle until well after 9pm. As a result, West Hampstead residents dined later and later, meaning longer nights for shift workers and even later after-work-drinks with Jim, Moet and the sunrise.

Amy Winehouse died in a home a 10 minute cycle away, imposing an eerie kind of atmosphere where historians would remember Back to Black could be heard streets over and the normally edgy, slightly rough Camden town enjoyed a robust smattering of preppys and tourists hoping to see a ghost.

London continued to be a revolving door of old faces and new tricks, wistful goodbyes to old friends and hellos to ones dearly missed.


I enjoyed a brief period of waking up at sunrise and going out and enjoying London before the tourists and the traffic do. Predictably this didn't last long.

A one year anniversary came and went and everything was still the same, plans just grander.

In transit

I used to love airports. They represented exciting adventures, hellos and duty free. Now they shriek long waits, delays, goodbyes and odd hours. More frustratingly, airports now seem an obstacle or a barrier to the outside world rather than a gate-way. I was in Hong Kong recently but do you think I can tell you one thing about this brilliant city? No, I was stuck in the confines of the airport due to our neverending security measures these days.

According to a friend you can't tick a country off your travel list unless you've left the airport. So Hong Kong stays on the list. Today, however, I have had the pleasure of exploring a brand new city, one that wasn't on the list, and probably never would have been.

I'm currently laid over in Brunei, in transit between New Zealand and London, for 12 hours. My initial impressions of Brunei were limiting. On the plane we were reminded that drug traffiking is punishable by the death penalty. On the arrivals card I am asked if I have any jewellery, cigarettes or telecommunication devices. All of which I have, but for some reasons I am suddenly hesitant to admit to.

To my pleasant suprise though, Brunei airport offered a free two-hour city tour to visitors in transit from specific countries. With my electronics equipment on the blink a tour of the city offered an exciting reprieve from a 36 hour leg to London.

Stepping outside the airport into the muggy heat (it was 30 degrees at 7.30am) seven of us were bundled into a small, air-conditioned mini van as our lovely tour guide (who didn't look a day over 12) educated us about Brunei life. And what a life it is.

The city itself seems ridiculously clean and so, so green. Luscious, colourful plants grow everywhere (75 percent of the land here is covered in forest), the vehicles are new and many of the government buildings and several of the sculptures gifted to the city from the Sultan are coated in gold.

The average salary is $2500 a month, all of which is take-home pay because tax isn't imposed here. In fact, it's hard to spend anything around here. Gas is about 30 cents a litre. Education is roughly $25 a year (for the cost of textbooks etc), healthcare is free bar a small registration fee of $1. If you are very sick and you can't be treated in Indonesia the Sultan will fly you anywhere in the world to be treated, along with one family member, "so you don't have to go alone."

Lunch was at a local market. A can of diet coke, five spring rolls and a meal of beef stir fry with rice cost $2 (and I was very kindly shouted by a fellow tourist as I didn't have any local currency on me). We were even treated to a paparazzi style police motorcade as the Prince of Brunei was shuttled to his palace through a big traffic jam. 

Maybe it was the euphoria at being let out of the airport but I could almost begin to see sense in such strict penalties on drug smuggling. These people seem to have a wonderful way of life, their country is rich and their Sultan is very well respected. What's the saying? Don't look a gift horse in the mouth? Crime rates are a very low five percent and it's easy to see why- in a country where the people are given so much, why would you feel the need to rebel?


That Sultan sure is swish- gold coated palace



Tales from nowhere

"To awaken quite alone in a strange town is one of the pleasantest sensations in the world."

Freya Stark.

"We've all been Nowhere. It might have been in the middle of Borneo or Beijing. It might have been in a Mayan mountain village, along a time-worn trail in Tuscany, or an isolated South Pacific island, or under a desert moon in Mali. Nowhere is a setting, a situation and a state of mind. It's not on any map, but you know it when you're there." Lonely Planet.

I'd made several crucial errors when I left Venice on a sunny Wednesday morning. Accustomed to purchasing last-minute train tickets to random destinations I decided to get on a train to Florence. I'd spent a day in Verona and a day in Venice and decided it would be criminal not to pay a visit to neighboring Florence, a mere 90 minute train ride away.

I love train rides. I love peering out the window and listening to music and marvelling at my location. I would happily sit on a train all day. It's so peaceful.



I failed to buy my return ticket until I arrived in Florence at lunchtime. To my dismay the only ticket left was on a three-hour overnight train that didn't arrive back in Venice until 1am. Which wasn't a massive problem- a long, exhausting day in Florence is a better day than anywhere else in the world- the problem was that the arrival destination wasn't Venice central. It was a half hour away from where I had originally left.

Me being me I decided I wouldn't worry about it until I had to. I figured there was a bus, or a cab. At 1am. On the outskirts of Venice. Surely.

Eerily beautiful, Pont Vecchio

 I was travelling alone for the first time in awhile. My contiki trips were brimming with people and I'd made several trips to Ireland and France with girlfriends I'd met in London. I'd nearly talked myself out of spending four days in Italy alone, before realising that moving to a foreign country alone was surely more frightening then travelling independantly for four days. Common sense prevailed. But I was still a little bored with nobody to talk to in Florence. Literally nobody, because I didn't speak Italian and the Italians didn't (or didn't want to) speak English.

I bought a map at the train station and spent the day meandering around markets, the magnificent Duomo, across Pont Vecchio to beautiful Giardino Bobolo where the freshly cut grass sent me straight back to New Zealand. Bizaarely, posters tacked around the gardens warned visitors that a young tourist had mysteriously dropped dead there the year before, putting an eerie cloud over the day.

By around 8pm it was starting to get dark and cold and after being on my feet for eight hours I decided to call it a day, have some dinner and head to the train station for my 9.30pm train. I had been weary about spending such a long day in Florence but I ended up marvelling at how quickly the day had gone and how well I had managed to do on my own in terms of ordering food and even managing to score a free glass of red wine and an espresso at two seperate eateries.

I was ready for bed though, and by the time I had found my platform at the station I was looking forward to another peaceful trip back to Venice.

I was taken aback when I boarded the train. It was an overcrowded sleeper, meaning most of the couchettes were beds, booked for overnight travellers. There were a few cabins with regular seating but they were so full that people had taken to sitting on the floor in the aisles. And then my second mistake of the day prevailed- my phone died, leaving me without my most revered type of entertainment- music.

I managed to find a seat in a couchette of six people. None of us knew one another and according to some ensuing phone conversations, Italian and French were the only languages spoken. The man sitting across from me took up most of the leg room but I was mostly aware of his iPad, wondering if I could summon up enough courage to ask if he had an Apple charger I could borrow.

The trip was long and boring. It was pitch black outside so I couldn't even admire the Tuscan scenery. The couchette was quiet and I didn't have a magazine. With little to distract me I began to disect the problem of how I was going to make it back to Venice once the train pulled in. It began to dawn on me that it was entirely possible that there were no transport links at that time of morning. Without my phone I couldn't even google the problem online.

While an Italian announcer would occasionally mention what stop we were due to arrive at, the pitch black night outside made the place names nonsensical. As far as I was concerned I was in the middle of nowhere, alone.



Alone in Florence, March 2011



Bologna at around what I guessed was midnight (no clock) and we stopped for what felt like twenty minutes. Scores of passengers left the train. It was quiet. And then the unmistakable smell of McDonalds. And voices speaking a familiar language. Thick accents cut the air as crudely as the smell of fries as an obsese American family boarded the train and found themselves in the same predicament I had been in two hours earlier- tiny couchettes, nowhere to sit.

It quickly became apparant to me that the foreigners I shared the couchette with understood English, as their lips started to curl up in tight smiles as we all listened, held captive, by the ensuing conversations in which the family (made up of two teenage girls, dad, grandpa Joe, stepmom Vicky and another married couple, apparantely a friend of the family's) set up camp in the aisle and began passing down bags of cheeseburgers and fries to each other as they cursed not having taken a flight instead of a midnight passenger train. Dad and Vicky went to painstaking lengths to ensure the entire family were comfortable, particularly Grandpa Joe, who at the ripe old age of about 70 should have been sitting on a seat, instead of the floor.

"We'll laugh about this one day," they chortled as the train took off again. The entertainment had apparantely arrived and I took great pleasure in observing a reality episode of Full House. They talked about their neighbour who had won the lottery, they talked about their vacation to date and their plans to fly to Paris, they talked about where in the heck were they anyway because it was so dark they couldn't make out any of the station signs that we were flying past. To my relief, eventually, they discussed how they were going to make it from the final train station to Venice.



We were in the same boat I realised. They didn't know it, but that dose of Americano in the middle of a midnight train to Venice was all I needed to realise that by no means was I ever travelling alone.